Coastal Cities Are Increasingly Vulnerable, and So Is the Economy that Relies on Them.

There was a time a decade or two ago when society could have made a choice to write off our massive investment in a fossil fuel-based economy and begin a policy driven shift towards a cleaner renewable infrastructure that could have forestalled the worst effects of climate change. But the challenges of collective action, a lack of political courage, and the power of incumbent pecuniary interests to capture the levers of power meant we did not. The bill is now coming due.

That means that many of our great, low-lying coastal cities are what we call “stranded assets.” GreenBiz founder Joel Makower defines a stranded asset as “a financial term that describes something that has become obsolete or nonperforming well ahead of its useful life, and must be recorded on a company’s balance sheet as a loss of profit.” Makower was talking about Exxon and other companies that built their businesses on the combustion of climate changing fossil fuels, not cities. But the concept easily transfers from businesses built on carbon to cities threatened by carbon’s impact.

Consider Miami. An invaluable, irreplaceable cultural jewel that will be stranded, both figuratively and literally, by climate change.

Read the Harvard Business Review story by Gregory Unruh - “Coastal Cities Are Increasingly Vulnerable, and So Is the Economy that Relies on Them.”